Superintendent Drill & Blast

• Balanced Work-Life Rhythm: Our lifestyle-friendly roster provides a harmonious balance between career and home life ensuring you spend more time with your loved ones and doing the things outside of work, that matter most to you.
• Permanent employment which includes a huge range of additional benefits
• We’re committed to Finding Better Ways™ and that starts with creating a safe, inclusive, and empowering environment for everyone

We’re Finding Better Ways™ to provide materials the world needs, now and in the future. Our values – care, courage and curiosity – guide how we work and how we treat each other.

About the role

We are looking for a robustly skilled Drill & Blast Superintendent to lead and enrich our dynamic Explosives & Dangerous Goods team. This pivotal role involves providing advanced technical support in drill and blast engineering and operations, while promising a blend of innovation and hands-on experience.

This is a great opportunity to lead from the front and make significant impact to a newly formulated team, with your passion for developing and coaching team members, coupled with the ability to encourage diverse thinking and challenge the status quo to our exciting new project based at Brockman Syncline 1, on a 5/2 4/3 roster.

Reporting to the Mine Manager and working in a challenging and exciting new project environment based at Brockman Syncline 1, with a diverse team within Drill and Blast, you will be responsible for:

• Provides leadership expertise in Drill and Blast at a site level, coupled with accountable for the design, organisation, management and execution of drill and blast operations and activities, and the results of a moderately complex operations team including subordinate work leaders
• Applies acquired expertise to analyse and solve problems without clear precedent, making decisions guided by policies, procedures and business plan; receives guidance and oversight from manager.
• Coach team members on performance, completes employee performance evaluations, and recommends pay actions, and define staffing needs, establish selection/assessment criteria, and identify development needs.
• Responsible for work unit training, safety compliance and departmental scheduling and productivity. Maximize productivity while minimizing cost and environmental impact, executing short and medium term plans and schedules to meet business strategy,

• Reviews safety and heritage critical blast designs, alongside conducts thorough audits of mines to ensure compliance with explosives management plans, leading continuous improvement projects to enhance overall mine productivity.
• Liaise with operational supervisors, superintendents, managers, and engineers, ensuring seamless project implementation on mine sites, while also collaborating with suppliers to incorporate the latest technologies into drill & blast practices, ensuring our methods stay at the forefront of industry advancements.

About you

• Dedicated to ensuring safety for yourself and the team.
• Over 10 years in mining, including 5 years in a Drill & Blast supervisory role, with experience leading teams in challenging environments.
• Highly organized with excellent project management, problem-solving skills, with the abiliy to deliver solutions across an operation

• Strong interpersonal, written, and oral communication skills, coupled with respect for others and an all-inclusive mindset 
• Statutory Position Legal Exam – Statutory Supervisor and Current WA ‘C’ Class – Manual License. The ability to obtain and maintain a dangerous goods security card will be well regarded.
• Prior experience in drill and blast design, wall control, and vibration modelling is essential, coupled with working knowledge of business and 3D mining software such as Vulcan, Blast Design software (e.g., Paradigm, BlastPlan, Shotplus, Viewshot)
   

If you are excited about the role and think you have what it takes but your experience doesn't align 100%, we still want to hear from you. 

We encourage women and Indigenous Peoples to apply, as we advance our business to more accurately reflect the world around us.

What we offer 

Be recognised for your contribution, your thinking and your hard work, and go home knowing you’ve helped the world progress.

• A work environment where safety is always the number one priority
• A permanent position working directly for Rio Tinto
• A competitive base salary reflective of your skills and experience with annual incentive program
• Comprehensive medical benefits including subsidised private health insurance for employees and immediate family
• Attractive share ownership plan
• Company provided insurance cover
• Extensive salary sacrifice & salary packaging options
• Career development & education assistance to further your technical or leadership ambitions
• Ongoing access to family-friendly health and medical wellbeing support
• Leave for all of life’s reasons (vacation/annual, paid parental, personal & cultural leave)
• Exclusive employee discounts (banking, accommodation, cars, retail and more)
• Possible domestic relocation assistance

We are committed to elevating Indigenous voices and increasing cultural knowledge in our business. Diversity of skills, life experiences and perspectives within our team enhances our way of working and our ability to achieve success together. To help you on your journey with us, you’ll also have access to:

• Specialist Indigenous Support Advisors are always there for our Indigenous employees and available to support through any aspect of your employment
• Dedicated Indigenous Talent Programme for our Operators and Tradespersons and entry level operational roles. This programme is designed to create long term sustainable careers for our Indigenous Employees to grow into leadership or technical pathways to ensure you have every opportunity to grow your career.
• Indigenous leadership programmes across some professional and operational roles to ensure that we are developing Indigenous Leaders
   

Where you’ll be working

Operations is located on the lands of the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura and Muntulgura Guruma Peoples in the eastern Pilbara, approximately 60 kilometres from Tom Price. Originally part of Greater Brockman, operations began in 2010 for the Brockman 4 deposit.

We are extending the life of our Brockman hub by developing the Brockman Syncline 1 mine project. Brockman Syncline will have the capacity to process up to 34 million tonnes per annum of iron ore, leveraging our existing plants. Construction has started, with first ore expected in 2027.

There are 3 villages that are part of the operations, Brockman 4, West Pilbara and Nammuldi Village. With a fly-in fly-out workforce of around 850, our team commutes from Perth, Geraldton, Albany and Busselton.

Applications close on the 12th of May 2026 (Rio Tinto reserves the right to remove advertised roles prior to this date).

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About Rio Tinto

Rio Tinto is a leading global mining and materials company. We operate in 35 countries where we produce iron ore, copper, aluminium, critical minerals, and other materials needed for the global energy transition and for people, communities, and nations to thrive.

We have been mining for 150 years and operate with knowledge built up across generations and continents. Our purpose is finding better ways to provide the materials the world needs – striving for innovation and continuous improvement to produce materials with low emissions and to the right environmental, social and governance standards. But we can’t do it on our own, so we’re focused on creating partnerships to solve problems, create win-win situations and meet opportunities.

Respect and Inclusion

At Rio Tinto, we particularly welcome and encourage applications from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, women, the LGBTI+ community, mature workers, people with disabilities and people from different cultural backgrounds.

We are committed to an inclusive environment where people feel comfortable to be themselves. We want our people to feel that all voices are heard, all cultures respected and that a variety of perspectives are not only welcome – they are essential to our success. We treat each other fairly and with dignity regardless of race, gender, nationality, ethnic origin, religion, age, sexual orientation or anything else that makes us different.

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